4/26/08

About a week ago The Monetizer realized he had gained about 35 followers on the fun website called Twitter. Twitter is the site that poses the question "What are you doing?" then gives you a little box to type about 140 characters or less about what you're doing. These little updates you send are called "Tweets" and friends on the site interested in what you have to say become your "followers". You can post your updates by the Twitter site, IM apps, or even your cell phone. Twitter has been proposed by many internet marketers and bloggers as a great tool for promotion and getting new ideas for your blog. John Cow even proposed in a recent blog entry that it could be more up to date than RSS feeds for notifying people of your new blog posts.

While 35 followers isn't a ton (some users have 10's of thousands of followers), it's a decent enough number to make the Monetizer want to use Twitter even more. So I decided to create Twitter accounts for a few other blogs I run, just to test the waters. I also downloaded a great little app called Twhirl. This is sorta like an AIM for Twitter with many helpful extra features. It's a program you download to your PC or MAC, and then login to your Twitter account(s) through it. This way you can quickly send out a Tweet from your desktop, rather than logging into Twitter. (Note: you'll need to download a copy of Adobe AIR prior to installing Twhirl).

Another site to consider using with this is Twitterfeed.com. On this site you can register yourself, then put in your blog's RSS feed to be fed to your Twitter account. As you post a new blog entry, Twitterfeed will send that to Twitter, in essence broadcasting your new post to anybody who may see it (followers or people who see it on the timeline).

Consider getting with Twitter as these days just about everybody's doing it. It can be a powerful little promotional tool for your blog when used properly. Depending on your blog's theme, you should search on Twitter for people who may be interested in your blog. For example if you blog about baseball, try looking up "Red Sox" or "Yankees" or "MLB" on Twitter. Browse through your results for members and follow those who have updated within at least the past week. They may soon be following you, subscribing to your blog and creating a great new connection or referral source for your blog site.

2 comments:

I am also a recent Twitter convert. I don't have 35 followers, but from what I'm learning, it is often better to follow than be followed. I appreciate the run down on Twitterfeed and Twirl. I can see where they would come in useful.